


fed to the rules and i hit the ground running

by salvainterra



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragons, Canon Divergence, Guess Whos A Dragon. Bitch, Humor, M/M, SOLDIER is known for dragon hunting now, Shapeshifting, Tenderness, but we love him anyways, sometimes you just want to write your faves saving each others lives, zack is a dumbass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 05:17:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15503142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvainterra/pseuds/salvainterra
Summary: Zack finds himself stranded in the middle of nowhere with a dragon and a broken leg, and things only get worse from there. Or better, depending on how you look at it.In which Cloud saves Zack's life, and he returns the favor. And they're technically mortal enemies, of course.





	fed to the rules and i hit the ground running

 

“Hey, heads up!”

 

The quartet of infantrymen straightened up and turned to look at Zack, snapping into salutes automatically. Behind the troopers, the traveler they’d been harrassing kept their head down. Zack was careful not to let his gaze focus any attention back on them.

 

“There’s a low-level breach in security in Sector 7, didn’t you all hear? They need as many eyes searching over there as possible.”

 

There was a pause, and Zack resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Just because he was the youngest First Class since Sephiroth, people weren’t sure how to treat him. “Dismissed,” he barked, channeling Angeal at his sternest and ignoring the pang at the thought of his old mentor. “Get going!”

 

The men jolted and hurried away, casting looks back as they did. Zack surveyed them, waiting until they had turned the corner of one of the shabby buildings, firmly out of sight, to turn and offer a hand up to the stranger. They took it, their face still mostly concealed by their hood.

 

“Sorry about that. Some of these trainees think it’s their job to intimidate anyone who looks too ‘suspicious’ down here by the entrance gates. I hope they didn’t give you too much trouble.”

 

He helped dust them off, not mentioning their tense shoulders or the way they kept their head lowered, their hood rendering them featureless. Lots of folks were wary of Shinra and SOLDIER especially, so it wasn’t anything new to him. New infantry recruits were less informed, and more suspicious. Not to mention, lots of them were a little arrogant. Hopefully, that would get trained out of them soon enough.

 

“Alright, have a good one!” He said, unperturbed by the other’s silence, and turned to head home, detour completed.

 

Before he could set off, there was a hand on his arm. He paused.

 

“Thank you,” The stranger said, voice soft but surprisingly solid. They pressed something small and cool into his hand, and he almost protested, thinking they had given him gil.

 

When he opened his hand, though, it wasn’t coin that looked back at him. Rather, it was a small pendant, oddly shaped with a symbol he didn’t know carved into the iridescent material. If he didn’t know any better, he would have called it a dragon scale, but no engraving tools were sharp enough to pierce those, so it had to be a convincing replica.

 

He looked up at the stranger and shook his head, holding his hand out in refusal. This was a well-crafted piece of work. Surely, they could find better use for it than giving it away to him?

 

“For luck,” they insisted, folding his fingers over it and pushing his hand back, “and protection. Stay safe.”

 

“Thank you,” Zack echoed, oddly touched that this wary stranger would offer this. They nodded simply, and then hurried away.

 

Zack held on to the pendant tightly the whole way back to his apartment. When he managed to string it onto his tag necklace proper, it was still as cool against his skin as it had felt first pressed into his hand. He tucked it under his shirt collar and deemed it his lucky charm for the foreseeable future.

 

\---  


 

Zack watched the dragon pace around him in odd little half-circles, struggling to stay on his feet. Every couple of minutes, it would tighten the radius of its pacing, and he would stagger back a painful step and attempt to lift the Buster Sword in a threatening gesture.

 

The dragon would always retreat, despite the fact that his arms had begun shaking from the strain each time. He had no idea what he was doing right to scare it off. By all accounts, dragons were supposed to be hunting machines, with sharp senses and sharper teeth. Most of all, they were relentless and merciless in seeking out human flesh. He would know. He’d seen exactly that quite a few times over the course of his missions, seeing as one of SOLDIER’s main efforts was to protect travellers from the increasing amount of dragons that could be found in the wilderness.

 

Yet, here he was, separated from the rest of his squad, one leg torn open and probably broken from his fall, dizzy from exhaustion and blood loss, and one shove away from toppling over. He was easy pickings, and yet this impossible dragon was _still_ being frustratingly non-murderous. It was pretty much the opposite of what he had expected when he’d first come across the dark-scaled creature.

 

He lowered the Buster Sword to use as a crutch for a moment, trying to put some distance between them without putting too much pressure on his injury. Maybe if he got out of its territory range, it would let bygones be bygones. He was already dangerously close to passing out, only adrenaline and the fucking dragon following him keeping him on his feet.

 

Unfortunately, the dragon seemed dead set on accompanying him. He could hear it moving behind him after a moment, light on its feet for a beast twice the size of a horse, and groaned. He found a comfortable tree to lean against and turned to face it again. It stopped out of range, and began pacing again, oddly irritated. Zack could relate.

 

“You know, you’re kind of bad at this,” he informed it, voice worryingly strained. “Your head is the size of my whole upper body, I’m pretty sure you could just bite me in half and be done with it.”

 

The dragon huffed judgmentally at him, rattling it’s oddly iridescent scales in indignation. He made a face at it.

 

“What, I’m totally right. It’s not like I _want_ to be bitten in half, but like all the dragons I’ve met up until now have been very set on trying to do just that. I feel kind of cheated that only _now_ am I getting the kind of dragon that apparently waits for its prey to bleed out and die. What kind of a lame death is that, huh?”

 

The dragon rattled harder, offended. He felt like the fact that he was anthropomorphizing the dragon was probably a bad sign. He sighed, and then slowly slid down the trunk of the tree until he was sitting, breathing slowly through the pain. He propped his sword up against his uninjured leg so that the pointed end was facing out, and tilted his head back at the dragon in challenge.

 

“C’mon. Have at you!” he said, twitching the blade.

 

The dragon stared at him for a long moment, and then turned and stalked away.

 

“Coward!” Zack protested weakly, before leaning his head back against the tree trunk and promptly passing out.

 

\---

 

When he woke up, it was less of his own accord and more because all his finely-honed instincts were screaming at him. He opened an eye just in time to watch the dragon drop a freshly killed deer at his feet, mouth dripping with blood. He frowned at it, completely bewildered.

 

It seemed to look between him and the deer for a pointed moment, and then when Zack didn’t react, it snorted in agitation and set the body on fire. Zack wrinkled his nose at the scent of burning fur at first, but after stumbling around in the woods for like 3 days without food, the resulting cooked meat was the best thing he’d ever smelled.

 

Too bad he’d probably get his hand bitten off before he could even attempt to eat any.

 

“Are you showing me how you’re going to prepare my corpse when I die? Are we playing mind games now?”

 

He twitched painfully as the dragon came closer, picking up the burnt meat and coming so close Zack could have reached out and touched it if he hadn’t been trying to panickedly wiggle away. It dropped the deer by his side, and then retreated to a nearby cluster of trees to curl up and begin primly cleaning the blood off itself, like a housecat. A big, murderous housecat.

 

Zack stared at it, more confused than ever, but there was really only so long he could be distracted from edible food right next to him. He dug in with his bare hands, successfully dragging his mind away from mildly hysterical thoughts of his inevitable death for the first time that day.

 

Once he’d reached the threshold of his admittedly shrunken stomach, he stopped and leaned back against the tree, eyeing the dragon from where it still sat a respectable distance away.

 

“Are you trying to fatten me up or have I just somehow been mistaken as a baby dragon?” he asked, already feeling more alive now that he wasn’t starving. “I suppose I do have the spikes.” The dragon huffed at him again, and then tucked its head under its wing, apparently taking a nap now that it had inexplicably fed Zack.

 

Zack waited until he was pretty sure it was deeply asleep, and then attempted to prop himself up so he could maybe hobble to a high ground where there would be a better view of his surroundings.

 

However, he hadn’t managed to get himself more than a foot off the ground before the dragon lifted a wing and gave him a deeply scolding look. He valiantly tried to continue, shifting up another inch, only for the dragon to shift its scales threateningly and hiss at him. He let himself slowly descend back to the ground, resigning himself to a nap.

 

“Prickly,” he grumbled in defeat.

 

The dragon grumbled back.

 

\---

 

When Zack woke the next morning, still confusingly not-dead, the dragon was gone.

 

While it was nice to not have seven years’ worth of training telling him that it was an act and that he was about to die any second now, the lack of motivation left his travelling pace painfully slow. Metaphorically and literally, as his leg injury continued to protest at even the slightest pressure.

 

Still, over the course of the next few hours, he managed to make a fair amount of headway following the river, trying to figure out if he was even travelling in the right direction. There was no landmarks for him to orient himself by, and he hadn’t managed to retrace his steps, since he had been sprinting from a dragon in the dead of night and then fell off an entire _cliff._ No real way to backtrack, unless he grew wings.

 

Speaking of wings… he let his shoulders sag as he heard the distinct wingbeats he’d been trained to recognize from his first mission. Of course the dragon would just take to the air and seek him out there. He’d almost forgotten that they had an unfair amount of limbs and hunting skill to match.

 

“Still stuck on this weird mother chocobo-ing thing? Mother dragoning?”

 

A low growl answered him, making every hair on the back of his neck rise. He turned around, slowly.

 

“Ah,” he said, remarkably composed. “You’re _not_ my dragon.”

 

The dragon, who looked both more vicious and larger than Zack’s dragon, snarled low in its throat and charged.

 

Only years of training his reflexes against these exact moves allowed Zack to roll away from getting skewered on the dragon’s rather prominent horns, and he paid the price as the pain of his injury made his legs lock. He hit the ground and scrambled away with his three non-mangled limbs. Glancing over his shoulder, he could see it had gotten its horns stuck in the tree Zack had just been leaning on, which was buying him time.

 

He managed to get himself behind a particularly thick oak a second before the sound of cracking wood split the air, the dragon undoubtedly wrenching itself free. He forced his breathing to slow, listening to the beast growl and pace around, searching out Zack’s rather pitiful hiding place. It would pick up his trail in no time, and with the freezing river on one side and open forest on the other, there was no place to hide.

 

He propped himself up on his arms, tense and ready to try anything that would buy him another moment in the fight, no matter how hopeless the situation looked. He closed his eyes, listening as the heavy footsteps came closer, the dragon breathing deeply to scent the air. He waited, drawn tight as a bowstring, until it was close enough that he knew it was just behind the tree.

 

An ear-splitting screech split the air.

 

His eyes snapped open just in time to see a familiar, spiked form descend from the sky like an avenging angel, diving past him to throw all of its weight against the other dragon. It snarled in surprise and then they began to fight in earnest, claws scraping against scales and an unending howl coming from the depths of his dragon’s chest through it all. Zack pulled himself away, both to get out of the range of the fight and to better see it. He’d never seen dragons genuinely fight like this.

 

They were a tangle of teeth and flesh and flaring wings, vaguely reminiscent of a wrestling match, if the ultimate goal of the match was to tear out your opponent’s jugular. Despite his dragon’s smaller size, it seemed to be more experienced with fighting others; while the larger dragon thrashed around and latched its jaw on anything it could reach, seeking out a weak spot, his dragon was already going for what Zack _knew_ was this species most vulnerable point, only held back by the larger dragon’s wildly snapping teeth.

 

Struck with the insensible urge to help, he dug at the riverbed for stones, pitching them at the dragon’s face with his better throwing arm. It whipped its head around, hissing, and Zack grinned. Distraction successful.

 

Sure enough, in the next moment his dragon managed to dig its hind claws into the soft oval of the other’s underbelly, and tore the flesh right open. The other dragon screamed in agony before pushing away, evidently deciding that Zack wasn’t worth it. His dragon rattled ominously, and the injured beast fled into the river, dying the waters red and letting the current carry it away.

 

Peace returned to the clearing, and his dragon took a moment to once again clean itself of gore before turning to Zack, pupils slitted. Still ramped up on adrenaline, he flinched back against the tree behind him, bark digging into his spine.

 

It paused, and somehow softened, raised scales and threatening spikes flattening until they were smoothed back once more. After a moment of snuffling around the ground, it approached slowly, settling just out of Zack’s range and dropping his Buster Sword at his feet. It huffed, a familiar and non-threatening noise, and Zack forced himself to relax.

 

“Okay, okay. You don’t want to kill me, I believe you. I only have a few friends that would fight a dragon for me. Though, I suppose you have a bit of an advantage over most of them.”

 

His dragon rumbled, folding its leathery wings in delicately and giving him a ‘no shit’ look. He grinned back at it.

 

“You know what this means, right? I can’t keep just calling you ‘dragon’ in my head. You’re getting a _nickname_. I’m thinkin’ Spikes. Y’know, cause you’re spiky?”

 

The newly-dubbed Spikes looked down at him through narrowed eyes for a long moment before turning and padding away, apparently washing its claws of him.

 

“Not setting me on fire means you like it!” Zack called after.

 

\---

 

The following days passed in much the same way, minus the dragon brawling. Zack would wake up, try a new path to find his way home, get even more lost, and then Spikes would vanish for a while before tracking him down and gifting him a fresh kill. After the third day, Zack even managed to convince it he could cook the meat on a fire without burning himself to an ash.

 

All in all, it was a fairly sweet setup for being stranded in the woods with a dragon and shredded leg. If he could just find the right direction to travel in, he could set all his focus on walking and not worrying.

 

Well. Except for worrying about what he was going to do with his dragon tag along, he supposed.

 

Spikes was a fairly unobtrusive traveling partner, except for when it would cut Zack off mid-path, firmly blocking his way ahead until he chose another direction. It had been annoying at first, but after that encounter with the dragon, he was starting to think it was just trying to prevent him from wandering into any more dragon territories.  

 

The thought prevented his complaining, even though a small Shinra-trained voice in the back of his mind kept insisting that it was probably leading him to a bunch of other dragons, or using him as easy prey for nestlings, or a variety of other discouraging possibilities. Still, none of them really fit his situation, and Spikes still just followed him around benignly for the most part.

 

It was when he finally called it quits and settled down every evening that he tested the newly-formed friendship between them by the means of incessant chatter. Spikes was uncannily intelligent, and responded to Zack’s rambling with any number of grumbling, snorts, or body language. After being lost in the woods for at least a week, it was almost as good as having a conversational partner that could talk back to him.

 

There were some things he didn’t talk about, like the fact that his injury had started oozing pus and the skin was hot around the edges, a sure sign of infection. After all, if an infection got past the mako in his system, it was strong enough that there was nothing he could do for it, not out in the woods like this.

 

Certainly nothing a dragon could do about it, except maybe cauterize the wound by torching his entire leg, which would also probably kill him, so it was better off that he kept it to himself. He didn’t even know if Spikes would understand either way.

 

Still, it was a bummer. After getting along with a _dragon_ for so long, he’d gotten his hopes up that everything would work out. He’d been using his sword as a crutch rather than a deterrent, and his travelling companion had made exactly zero attempts on his life, which was the ideal amount. He just had to get himself un-lost, shake the dragon without getting eaten or leading it to civilization, and he’d be back home in no time.

 

Too bad his body had finally given up on him. It was really his own fault. He’d delayed checking the injury too long, assuming he was going to die either way, and now there was no question about it. It was badly infected, and he didn’t have anything to fix it.

 

Now all he could do was wait.

 

\---

 

When Spikes returned the next evening, Zack was already shaking with fever and dry heaving every so often, all prior contents of his stomach long gone. Cold chills wracked his body, and he couldn’t even glance at food without feeling nausea climb back up his throat.

 

He’d wondered if Spikes would understand what was happening, would know that anything was wrong at all, but he should’ve known better than to doubt its intelligence after all this time. The dragon picked up on his illness as soon as it entered the clearing, abandoning its catch of the day to stalk over to Zack, eyes narrowed.

 

Zack rubbed at his clouded eyes, vision blurring in time with the pounding of his head. Spikes was suddenly closer than it had ever gotten, close enough to make a small, instinctive part of his mind want to wail and cower. He only managed to shift and groan, his fears forgotten in the face of the fever gripping him. He watched Spikes inspect him with alarmed eyes, wheezing a light laugh at the concern he was imagining in them.

 

“Sorry, pal. Can’t fight off a fever for me.” Speaking took a surprising amount of effort. His voice was tremulous and shaky, which meant it matched the rest of him perfectly. “You made a good effort, though.”

 

Regardless of motivations and/or possible dinner plans, Spikes had kept him alive for much longer than he would’ve survived on his own. He could at least be grateful for that.

 

His brain frying like an egg in his skull must’ve made him bold, because without another thought, he reached out to where Spikes was eyeing his infected leg, and bumped his hand onto its snout. The tiny, interlocked scales were smooth and cool, just like his pendant, and he sighed at the soothing effect it had on his burning skin.

 

Spikes watched him unreadably with those eerie, cat-like pupils, and then huffed a gust of air in his face and withdrew. Zack whined, but the dragon only paced out of sight, its footsteps fading away. Huh. Guess it really _hadn’t_ wanted to eat his corpse after all. Who would have thought. Of course, now he only had the crickets for company.

 

His somewhat nonsensical thoughts about the pros and cons of dying alone in a forest were interrupted by the crunching of detritus underfoot, and for a moment he thought Spikes had come back to try and feed him a deer as his last meal or something. After a few seconds, however, he realized that these footsteps were all wrong, too light and following the wrong tempo. He tried to remember what creature these footsteps indicated, brow furrowing in concentration.

 

The steps stopped, and there was movement in his peripheral vision. He swung his head to the side a beat late, blinking blearily at the figure he saw. Oh yeah. Human footsteps. That’s what that was. Been a while since he’d heard those.

 

Before he could think about much else, he found there were cool fingers on his neck and absolutely nothing else mattered. He melted against the touch, and didn’t bother to struggle or otherwise try to move as the stranger tucked an arm under his legs and picked him up with surprising ease.

 

He hissed at the searing pain from his leg being moved, and the stranger murmured indistinct words in an apologetic tone. His mind hazy and his body exhausted, he let the noise lull him into closing his eyes, and before he knew it, he must have fallen asleep.

 

\---

 

In what felt like a heartbeat but must have been several hours, he found himself blinking awake, in the light of day once more.

 

The stranger was still carrying him in his arms, and he spent a few moments looking blankly up at him. He was pale-skinned, with a sharp jaw and an array of blonde hair sticking up like a chocobo’s crest. He was familiar like a forgotten dream, and there was something odd about his face that Zack couldn’t quite put his finger on, especially from his current angle.

 

“You carryin’ me to the Lifestream?”

 

The stranger jumped, cool hands tightening around Zack and then relaxing. He looked down at him, and between one blink and the next, the strangeness Zack had tried to figure out vanished, leaving behind a normal face looking down at him with ice blue eyes. A trick of the light?

 

“You… You’re awake,” the stranger spoke, voice soft and with little inflection. Wishing to take the somber look out of his gaze, Zack offered him a tired smile.

 

“Not dead yet, then.” Hm. On second thought, that could be the reason behind the somber gaze. Couldn’t be much fun, lugging around a dying man all night.

 

To his surprise, the stranger only shook his head, his face easing slightly as he looked back at the path ahead. “Not for lack of trying, I’m sure.”

 

“Hey,” Zack protested, weakly. “I have it on good authority that I’m great at not dying.” A sharp pain jolted through his leg, as though in protest, and he winced. “...Most of the time.”

 

The stranger snorted lightly in blatant disbelief, and Zack made a face at him. A small part of him wondered where they were going, who this stranger was, how he had even found him in the first place, but most of him felt like week-old leftovers pushed to the back of the fridge. That was to say, he felt too tired to worry about asking questions.

 

He dragged his mind back to the topic at hand, eager to continue speaking with a conversational partner who would talk back. What were they talking about? Oh right, his propensity towards almost dying. There was a defense against that somewhere, he was sure...

 

He grinned in triumph when he finally found an argument. “I spent… lots of days, in the company of a dragon without getting killed. I think that’s pretty great at not dying.”

 

The stranger looked askance at him, amusement and wariness intertwined in his expression. “Really. How’d you manage that, then? Held it off valiantly with your sword and your battered leg?”

 

Despite his words, his tone wasn’t mocking, only curious. Zack fumbled his answer for a moment, his feverish mind caught on a new detail. “My sword--!”

 

The stranger caught Zack’s flailing hand and pressed his arms against him as to not lose his grip.  “Easy, easy there. It’s on my back. Unwieldy thing, but I know you wouldn’t want it left behind.”

 

Zack’s panic eased, letting him relax back into his carry. He didn’t want to have lost something so important, dying from infection or not. Still, for a stranger to lug him and the Buster Sword’s considerable weight around... “Thank you,” he said, sincerely. The stranger’s face softened, and he nodded in acknowledgement.

 

The conversation stalled for a long moment, Zack struggling to remember the question and the stranger content to walk in silence.

 

“The dragon,” Zack said, finally recalling, “was easily capable of overtaking me while injured. It didn’t though. Doubt I would’ve lived long enough for you to find me without it’s help, even.”

 

He frowned, an errant thought of the stranger’s strength and endurance crossing his mind. “If you see it, don’t fight it, please? It’s got big spikes and dark scales that are super shiny, and I promise it probably won’t try to eat you--”

 

“I know the beast you describe, and you don’t need to worry. He’ll come to no harm from me,” he assured Zack, wryly.

 

“You do?” Zack blinked, surprised. “Wait… Could it be… you’re my guardian angel?”

 

The stranger, who had begun to look progressively more tense, took his own turn to be surprised, shoulders relaxing in shock. The expression made his face look much younger. “What?”

 

“How else could you know about me so much when I haven’t met you? I was right, I _am_ dead, after all!”

 

He nodded assuredly as the angel’s face flickered quickly through a variety of emotions. Zack clumsily patted his hand in reassurance. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you suck at your job.”

 

“I-- You’re not dead, Zack. And you’re the one who keeps being difficult. If you’d followed my basic guidance, you’d be back to Midgar by now, instead of stuck out here, sweating all over me. You’re lucky I like you.”

 

Zack hummed in triumph, his theory completely correct. And he thought the fever had been slowing him down! “You have to like me, or else I would’ve died… a lot of times over, by now.”

 

His angel rolled his eyes. “Maybe the Lifestream doesn’t want you disturbing its peace just yet.”

 

“Mmno,” Zack mumbled, beginning to feel exhaustion pull at his bones again, “the Lifestream would love me. I’m hilarious.”

 

He buried his face into the junction between his angel’s neck and collarbone, sighing in relief at the feeling of coolness. His angel must have had terrible circulation, despite the pulse Zack could feel racing against his forehead. Maybe angels just ran cold. Zack certainly wasn’t complaining.

 

“Planet help me,” his angel muttered above him, before adjusting his arms to tuck Zack more securely against him. As he drifted off, he vaguely felt cold fingertips brush aside his shirt collar, revealing the pendant tucked into the hollow of his neck. There was a sigh.

 

“Guardian angel, huh?”

 

\---

 

It was worse, the next time he woke up.

 

Night had fallen, and his angel was still walking. Did angels need sleep? He wanted to ask, maybe bully his angel into resting, but the only sound that came out of his mouth was an incoherent mumble. He frowned, working to make his lips form the syllables properly.

 

“‘Eed meep?” Not even close.

 

The angel looked down at him, eyes reflecting the moonlight strangely. His face was hard to look at again, Zack’s eyes gliding over parts as though they were out of focus. His expression remained intent.

 

“Awake again? We’re almost there.”

 

“‘Most where?” He echoed, feeling as though someone had smeared glue all over his face and then poured hot water on top of it. His jaw was aching and his mouth tasted like death. Ugh.

 

“Almost to help,” His angel reassured him, shifting his hand to press that soothing cold skin against Zack’s chin. He mumbled, confused.

 

Didn’t you have to be dead to see an angel? Was he just between the veils of life and death having a really long and boring near-death experience? “Dead?” He asked, succinctly.

 

Somehow, his angel understood what he was asking. “You’re not going to die, Zack. Not after all the trouble you’ve put me through.”

 

Zack made a weak sound of indignity, and let his head loll back against his angel’s shoulder. Now that he thought about it, he did hurt too much to be dead just yet, didn’t he?

 

Ahead, he saw a set of oddly shaped lights. _A window,_ his mind supplied, and he wondered who was crazy enough to live out here with dragons and sleepless guardian angels. He stared as they drew closer, revealing the full shape of the tiny cabin, surrounded by flowers even in the approaching winter. He felt himself going limp, dark spots fluttering at the edges of his vision.

 

“No dying,” His angel said, firmly. Zack grunted in agreement, and then slipped into blissful unconsciousness.

 

\---

 

He remained in those cool depths for a while, exhausted. If he remembered to pull himself up to the surface, he would wake for a bit, and he was always burning hot or cold, full of extremes and nothing else. There was little he could do in such a state, but impressions came in half-remembered flashes.

 

_A friendly voice, tight with strain. Damp cloth against his head. Magic swirling thick in the air._

 

“You just hold on, pretty boy. I’m sure a strong SOLDIER like you can break this fever no problem, so think cooling thoughts, okay?”

 

-

 

_A familiar hand against his forehead. Safe. No dying._

 

“How is he?”

 

“It seems like he’s started to cool down, but he’s still practically boiling. If it weren’t for the mako in his blood, he’d be dead.”

 

“He’s good at not dying.”

 

_A chime of tired laughter._

 

“Something you two have in common, then.”

 

-

 

_Warm soup on his lips. The low tones of a quiet conversation._

 

“You know they’re not going to like this. Picking up a SOLDIER, of all people.”

 

“If we’re lucky, they won’t need to know.”

 

“Oh, Cloud, you know we’re never lucky.”

 

“No, but he is. Let’s hope it holds out.”

 

\---

 

Zack finally pulled himself conscious to the sensation of being vaguely lukewarm, and it was the best thing he’d ever felt.

 

Of course, as soon as he settled into being fully awake for the first time in ages, his body told him in no unclear terms that he actually felt like shit. He groaned softly at the ache that ran through him, from his head to his legs, and then paused.

 

His leg wasn’t pulsing with pain, now that he was paying attention to it. He twitched his toes. No pain. He opened his eyes to check, and also maybe see what the hell was going on, and was met with a pair of bright green eyes an inch away from his face.

 

“Ghkt!” Zack eloquently choked out as he flattened himself against the bed. Above him, the eyes withdrew, revealing them to be set in a very lovely face. He stared, dumbfounded.

 

“Welcome awake!” She told him, tucking an errant strand of chestnut hair back.

 

“Oh, I’m absolutely dead, aren’t I?” Zack said, blinking dazedly. She laughed at him, unabashed.

 

“No, Zack. You’re not dead. You managed to pull through that fever and I treated you to stave off any further infection.” She gestured to his leg, which was bound in a cast and still distinctly pain-free. “Water?”

 

He realized abruptly how thirsty he was. Another point for the ‘not dead’ category, right up there with ‘beautiful woman tells me so’. “Yes, please.”

 

The woman reached over and pulled him up into a sitting position with considerable strength, before handing him a dainty teacup of water. He sipped from it, despite his thirst. It just wouldn’t feel right to chug from a teacup. He finished the cup in no time at all, and the woman held up a pitcher in offering. He nodded, taking in the small, rather cozy cabin interior around them.

 

“Uh… What happened?” He asked, and she paused mid-pour to glance up at him.

 

“You don’t remember?”

 

He shook his head, trying to recall how he’d gotten here. “I was… lost and hurt out in the woods. I got sick?” His brain pulled up the sensation of soothing arms around him, but the memories were just out of reach, made confusing and hazy by the fever. “From there, I just remember… burning up.”

 

She sighed, setting the pitcher aside. “Yes, you were seriously sick when you showed up on my doorstep. I looked after you and did my best to keep you cool, but it wasn’t until your fever broke that I knew you would survive. Most wouldn’t have made it.”

 

Well, he had kind of thought he was definitely for sure going to die. Looks like his luck had pulled through again. “Thank you, for helping me. I have no doubt I wouldn’t have made it otherwise.”

 

“Of course! I couldn’t let such a pretty face go to waste.” She smiled mischievously at him, and he mimed swooning. Finally, a jokester after his own heart. He opened an eye to peek at her, curious.

 

“Speaking of pretty faces, might I know the name of yours?”

 

She pretended to consider for a moment, looking at him with mock-speculation, before grinning. “I _suppose_ that’s only fair, seeing as I know yours. You can call me Aerith.”

 

Zack raised his eyebrows. “You know my name?”

 

Aerith pulled a familiar necklace out of her pocket, letting it swing like a pendulum. “You weren’t exactly hiding it,” she said, catching one of the military identification tags between her fingers. “Zack Fair, SOLDIER First Class, huh?”

 

He gave her a lopsided smile. “That’s me.”

 

“And what about this?” Aerith held up his pendant, inquisitive. “A trophy?”

 

“Nah. A gift.” He reached out to take it, relishing the familiar coolness. “My good luck charm!”

 

She smiled at him with a satisfied expression as he slipped the necklace cord over his head. “Is that so? Glad you won’t get into a fight with that guy, then.”

 

She jabbed a thumb to the nearby window, where he finally noticed there was a very familiar dark snout resting on the sill.

 

“Spikes?” He said, and the dragon in question snorted at him, as though saying ‘About time you realized. What kind of dragon hunter are you?’ He made a face at it. “I’m recovering from serious illness, give me a damn break.”

 

Spiked snuffled doubtfully, and Aerith giggled. He sat up a bit at the reminder that they were both in the same vicinity, and turned to make sure his new friend wasn’t terrified of his scaly one. “Uh, I can explain.”

 

“No need,” Aerith told him, walking over to the window and beginning to scratch at the small scales by Spikes’ ears, “Cloud already told me everything I need to know.”  

 

He stared, stunned at the display. Spikes tilted its head to allow her better scratching access, nonchalant. “Cloud? No, wait-- It _told_ you? And you understood?”

 

“Cloud is his name. You seem to understand him pretty well, so there’s no reason I wouldn’t,” Aerith said with a smug grin. “I’m a dragon whisperer, after all.”

 

Spikes-- or apparently, Cloud-- huffed at her, blowing her bangs back from her face, and she laughed. Zack sat back, dumbfounded. The impossible scene of woman and dragon casually interacting in front of him really drove home the concept that Cloud wasn’t looking to hurt anyone. Possibly even saved Zack’s life, somehow.

 

He was struck by a sudden, terrible thought. “Are all dragons-- do they all have the potential for this?” The idea of trying to kill Cloud now was painful, but did that go for the dragons trying to kill him, as well? Had he been hunting creatures that were intelligent and peaceful all along?

 

Aerith’s features softened, and she returned to the chair by his bedside. “Unfortunately, no. Cloud is one of a rare few that hasn’t been poisoned by the Calamity’s influence. Most of the Planet’s dragons have been turned against her and her people, hunting innocent travelers outside of their territory. If a dragon seeks your flesh, it is no longer itself.”  

 

Zack pulled his gaze away from Cloud, who was listening to them speak with an intent look in his eyes. The fact that he hadn’t been killing dragons like Cloud all these years was good, but… “The Calamity?”

 

Something tired and old flitted across Aerith’s face, before she leaned over him, adjusting his bedding.

 

“That’s enough for now, Zack. If you and I cross paths again, you’ll know more. For now, it’s time you finally headed home, don’t you think?”

 

She stalled his protests with a finger on his lips, and the unmistakable feeling of a Sleep spell settled onto him, making his eyelids feel irresistibly heavy. As he faded into sleep, he felt the graze of fingers at the hollow of his neck.

 

“This will show you the way, if you ever truly need it.”

 

\---

 

When he next woke up, he was sitting propped up against the outer wall of the slums under Sector 5, with a flower tucked behind his ear and an unfamiliar materia strung onto his necklace, right next to his lucky pendant. It was the only proof he had that he hadn’t imagined the entire thing.

 

He limped over to the nearest guard booth, flashed his tags at the astonished troopers, and used the landline to call a number he knew by heart.

“Hello?”

 

“Hey, Kunsel.”

 

To his credit, his friend recognized Zack’s tired voice instantly. “Zack! Everyone thought you were dead, I’ve been running on search patrols for you for weeks! What happened?”

 

“I’m… not entirely sure,” Zack admitted, still a little shocked at everything that had happened, “and I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.” Where would he even start? The dragon? Aerith, his mysterious savior and dragon-whisperer? It all sounded like a fever dream. He looked out at the wastes and the woods beyond, rolling the materia in his fingers. It didn’t respond, only glowing softly.

 

“I think there’s someone out there looking out for me,” he said, finally. “I’d like to know more about them.”

 

\---

 

Weeks passed, and no matter how many long-distance missions he applied to, he could never seem to fulfill whatever requirements there were to activate Aerith’s materia. He had told everyone who asked that he could barely remember what had happened, and that he must’ve been extraordinarily lucky to get out in one piece. It was more or less true, and his genuine confusion at the gaps in his memory during his fever convinced even the Turks.

 

More than once, he found himself wondering if his fever-addled brain really did fabricate the entire thing, dragon and all. He could never let himself believe it though, hand inevitably straying back to the charms on his neck, gifts from mysterious friends. He kept looking, Kunsel sending him messages whenever new travel missions popped up.

 

It was on one of these that his perseverance finally paid off.  

 

The mission was simple enough, a scouting team sent out to look for signs of a dragon after multiple sightings were reported near Junon. They’d settled down to camp for the night after a day of fruitless searching, and Zack had brushed past the first guy on watch to go take a piss in the privacy of the forest around them. Things would have likely ended there, if he hadn’t noticed the light pulsing of the materia against his collarbones.

 

He held it up, excitement blossoming in his chest as it lit up brighter when pointed in a certain direction. Without another thought, he began to make his way deeper into the thick forest, letting the materia’s pulsing guide him. It was like a heartbeat, growing stronger the closer he got to… whatever it was leading him to. Aerith?

 

The only warning he got was the sudden cut-off of the materia’s light, leaving him struggling to see in the dusk’s fading light. He stared at it, willing it to flicker back to life, and then the trees above him began to shatter.

 

Zack tumbled back and instinctively ducked away from the noise, shielding his head from the destruction raining around him with one hand. As he looked, a large form hit the ground with earth-shaking force. He moved forwards cautiously as the clearing settled back into silence.

 

As he circled around, a large, reptilian eye snapped open. He froze, pinned by the icy stare, and then was struck by a pang of familiarity. “Spikes…?” He whispered, and the dragon let out a familiar huff, eyes dilating. He approached without hesitation, his joy fading as he took in the state of the dragon.

 

“Cloud, buddy, what happened?” He pressed his hands gently against Cloud’s back, and the dragon shifted a wing up. Zack stepped back, worried he’d hurt him somehow, before seeing the slight glow of mako Cloud’s motion had exposed.

 

He knelt, and then hissed in sympathy. There was an oversized tranq embedded in the pocket of soft flesh beneath the wings, emanating an ominous green glow. It was precise, which meant it had to be Turk work. “Sorry about this,” Zack warned before pulling the hooked end free in one quick motion. Cloud beat him over the head with his wing, and Zack ducked away. “Sorry, sorry,” he apologized as he broke open the tranq canister. He dropped it immediately at the sight of raw mako spilling out.

 

“What the hell…”

 

Zack could understand tranqs to ward off an attacking dragon, but who the hell was going around shooting modified mako tranqs? Even if it knocked the creature out for a moment, mako mutations only made things bigger and more vicious. What were the Turks fucking thinking? What was _Shinra_ thinking?

 

He was pulled from his disbelief by the sound of faint growling, and turned to Cloud with a sense of foreboding. Speaking of bigger and more vicious… The dragon’s eyes had constricted to little more than slits, and they seemed to be more green than the blue he remembered. He held his hands up in a sign of peace as the growling got louder.

 

“Cloud? You with me, buddy?”

 

The threatening noise stuttered, and Cloud seemed to look at Zack with something resembling desperation before letting his head come to rest on the ground again. Zack stepped forwards, panic fluttering in his ribcage, and Cloud began to dissolve, like he had suddenly turned to ash.

 

The dust seeped into the dirt as though it had never existed in the first place, leaving Zack staring, stupefied, at a familiar human figure sprawled on the ground. Several things clicked into place at once, but Zack didn’t have time for any of them. He slid to Cloud’s side, dragging him up and pulling the hood of his cloak off. Zack’s ‘guardian angel’ responded weakly, clutching onto his shirt, and looked up at him with blue eyes that were beginning to grow hazy. Zack cursed under his breath, seeing the bloodstain starting to spread from Cloud’s side. That much raw mako in one human body… Even a SOLDIER would be hard-pressed to survive.

 

In the distance, he heard the hum of helicopter blades.

 

“Zack,” Cloud started, and then seemed unable to finish, mouth faltering on syllables. He grunted lightly in frustration and went deliberately limp, letting his head drop back to expose the most vulnerable part of the neck. It was a request Zack recognized. He’d seen it before.

 

Something hardened in the pit of Zack’s stomach, and he pulled his knife from the holster on his belt with a slick metallic sound. Cloud closed his eyes.

 

Zack snorted, and then used the knife to slice a long strip of cloth from his shirt. At the tearing noise, Cloud twitched, and then looked around with dim eyes, watching as he pressed a makeshift gauze and bandage against his injured side. After a moment of processing, he shifted his gaze to Zack’s face, his face almost making it to confusion before falling slack again.

 

Zack tied the bandage off and ruffled Cloud’s hair, crouching close to look directly into his clouded eyes.

 

“No dying, got it?”

 

Without giving Cloud time to respond, unsure if he even could, he slung the smaller man’s body across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, suddenly grateful he hadn’t brought the bulky Buster sword with him to piss. He pulled Aerith’s materia back out and held it aloft like a lifeline.

 

“Please,” he whispered, “help me get him to safety.”

 

The materia flared.

 

\---

 

His path was governed by only two things for the following weeks: Aerith’s materia and the sound of Turks on their tail. The latter only persisted for so long, but he quickly found that the danger of discovery was replaced by the danger of running through dragon-heavy terrain.

 

The first attack was a small breed that he killed through a mixture of adrenaline and luck, and he quickly realized that the further he went, the bigger and more frequent dragons became. He learned to scout ahead, to move downwind, to be quiet enough that he could stab and slice open a dragon’s weak point before it realized he was there. It made him feel like he was playing Turk.

 

Dragons scouted overhead constantly, and so he ditched any bright clothing and slathered himself and Cloud with any mud or moss or overgrowth that he could find. Thankfully, Cloud’s cloak seemed fairly effective in that already, especially at night. He learned to listen for the sound of wings slicing through the air, and watch the ground for approaching shadows. Any sign was enough to drive him to stillness.

 

Through it all, he was fighting. For every dragon he avoided, there was another that found him while he was scouting ahead, or caught him just before he could sense them above. Only years of ingrained training and knowledge left him the survivor of each battle, and only the certainty that he wouldn’t leave Cloud alone out here to waste away kept him moving. He slept lightly, with Cloud’s prone form tucked against him so that most of Zack’s body mass shielded him. Dragons didn’t pay Cloud any mind, so it wasn’t a particularly useful gesture, but it made him feel better.

 

He knew why Cloud was overlooked, of course, if not how. In the light of day, he only had to look at Cloud’s face to see what had been hidden before. Familiar scales climbed up the sides of his cheekbones, and when he checked his eyes for responsiveness, they contracted like a cat’s against the light. Whatever Cloud’s deal was, he hadn’t passed into a brain dead state yet, and that meant Zack still had hope.

 

Luckily, with two working legs, the local wildlife was no match for him, especially not when he’d been sneaking up on goddamn dragons. He made sure to stop regularly to help Cloud through eating and drinking, aware of the irony of the reversed roles.

 

It was during one of these rare breaks that Zack found a strong grip was suddenly tight against his wrist. Cloud was looking at him with slitted eyes, but he seemed perfectly lucid for the first time in weeks. Zack gripped his hand, waiting for him to manage words.

 

“Z..ack,” he managed, after a moment of staring at his face. Zack smiled, nodding in agreement and encouragement.

 

“Where?” he asked, before waving a weak hand as though dismissing the question, “No, no, you… Calamity ‘s in me. I’ll… You have to. Leave. Zack. Not you.” His voice strengthened, and for a moment his eyes locked onto Zack’s. “Leave. Please. Leave. Leave me.”

 

“Enough of that,” Zack said, tone sharp. He buried a hand into the back of Cloud’s matted hair and brought their foreheads together with a light bump, eyes only inches apart.

 

“You can’t get rid of me that easy,” Zack told him, grin sharp. “Not after all the trouble you’ve put me through. After all, we’re friends, aren’t we?”

 

Something in Cloud’s gaze turned soft, and he raised a hand, fingertips grazing Zack’s cheek as though he was cementing Zack’s face in his memory. “Stu...bborn.” He blinked slowly, and in a heartbeat he had faded away again. Zack released him, leaning back as his head slowly drooped forwards. He held the materia around his neck up, watching it glow, now pulsing distinctly bright even in the sunlight.

 

They were getting closer.

 

“Don’t give up on me now, Cloud.”

 

\---

 

Ironically enough, it wasn’t the dragons that ended up being his biggest trouble. Dragons were familiar, and fighting them was like countering the enemy in a video game you’ve played hundreds of times. There’s only so many moves they make, and after over a month spent in the thick of their territory, Zack was intimate with all of them, and how to overcome them.

 

What he wasn’t familiar with was wolves.

 

He didn’t think much of them at first, hearing the distant howls grow closer with only vague acknowledgement. A SOLDIER First Class was easily a match for a wolf pack as long as he didn’t do anything stupid, and when they finally caught up, he was ready, Cloud tucked securely into the upper branches of a thick oak. They encircled him threateningly, but fled after he caught one through the throat with his dagger and threw the body with enough force to knock a few others back. For a while, they vanished, and he thought they’d left in search of easier prey.

 

Unfortunately, he was wrong on all counts. He might be able to handle the pack in a direct fight, but they weren’t engaging directly anymore. Instead, they followed him, not close enough to see but not far enough that his senses can ignore them. He’d been on guard since he fled with Cloud that first night, but the feeling of being constantly, consistently hunted left him wired with stress.

 

He learned not to stop too long to sleep, or they would catch up and try to take a bite out of him or Cloud. He kept moving long after he’d grown exhausted, listening to the sounds of the wolves circling in the undergrowth. Every time they tried to attack him, he managed to ward them off, but they never stopped pursuing. As time went on, it became more and more evident that he was managing on mako and willpower alone.

 

Still, the materia was pulsing brighter each day, and he only had to think about how Cloud had carried his feverish self for days without rest to summon up the energy to keep moving. They’d get there soon. He was sure of it.

 

He pressed himself against a tree, carefully still as he watched a dragon glide overhead. The glistening white of its underbelly had become strikingly familiar, since it had passed overhead multiple times, never seeming to find what it was looking for. He kept quiet. The dragon was easily thrice the size of Cloud, one of the biggest he’d ever seen, and he had no doubt that he couldn’t take it on, especially not in this kind of state.

 

After a few moments, he deemed the coast clear, and started off again. Cloud was a constant, reassuring weight against his shoulders, his slow, deep breaths reminding Zack to keep moving. It wasn’t only Zack’s life that was at stake, after all.

 

In his hand, the materia suddenly pulsed rapidly, practically vibrating in place. He quickened his pace, and then staggered as he passed through a wave of magic. It was like pushing against a sticky plastic for a moment, before the barrier relented and let him through so easily he almost stumbled. The materia went silent.

 

He caught himself, and looked up.

 

There was a child there, staring at him with wide brown eyes. He stared back for a moment, astonished by the sight of a kid kneeling in a berry patch as though this was a field of a safe village, rather than the middle of a dangerous mountain forest. She stood up, hands clutching the handle of a basket and gaze locked on his dagger, fearful. He could see the intent to flee in her body language, and he held his free hand up, pleadingly.

 

“Please wait, I don’t mean any harm.”

 

She stalled, eyeing him warily through her bangs. He lowered himself to his knees to get to her level and continued, encouraged by her pause.

 

“I’m looking for… a woman, with bright green eyes,” Zack started, and shifted to adjust the listing Cloud on his back. Her eyes shifted up to the cloaked figure on his shoulder, and widened in shock. Before he could say another word, she had dropped the basket and fled, moving with surprising speed for such a young child. “Wait--!”

 

But she was already gone. Zack sighed, and twisted his neck to check on Cloud. His hood had been knocked back, meaning that his distinct hair was showing, but he hadn’t started bleeding or frothing at the mouth since the five minutes ago when Zack had last checked on him. Maybe she’d thought he was dead? He got back to his feet, bolstered by the thought. “No dying,” he reminded Cloud, and began walking again.

 

He couldn’t have gotten much further than the berry patch when he felt an ominously familiar vibration along the ground. He picked up on the tempo of the racing thumps easily; a dragon. How the hell had it found him so easily? He quickly propped Cloud up against the overgrown roots of a nearby tree, covering him securely with the cloak.

 

He turned and unsheathed his dagger just as the dragon came into view, heavily armored with thick dull grey scales, except for its right forelimb, which was a darker grey and laden with spikes. Zack hunkered down, every muscle in his exhausted body preparing for a fight, because he was _so close._ He wouldn’t die here and now, not after he’d brought Cloud so far.

 

He rolled away as the dragon lunged at him, emanating a deep, menacing growl as it did. He tried to strike back, but it ducked away with surprising agility, leaving him throwing himself back to avoid being hit by its bulky tail. He circled it, warier. It was watching him instead of charging, eyeing him with eerie calculation.

 

He’d run into an enemy who didn’t follow the normal moves.

 

The fight stretched on, and they continued at the same frustrating standstill, him unable to pierce the armor and the dragon only managing to land a few scrapes. Zack, however, was running on the barest scraps of sleep and exhaustion weighed him down. If he didn’t do something dangerous to gain the upper hand soon, he’d be worn down until he slipped up again.

 

Before he could act on this impulse, there was a  low, long call that echoed through the land around him. Instantly, the dragon before him roared back, and Zack was reminded of the wolves’ howling with a sinking feeling in his gut.

 

Sure enough, more dragons appeared around them, what felt like only moments later. Zack heard them circling, at least three in total, and backed up. The first glance he got of one was it appearing only a few feet from Cloud’s prone form, gaze intent, and Zack felt fury and fear surge through him.

 

“Get _away!”_ He yelled, throwing his dagger without a second thought. The dragon ducked away, and his knife sunk into the trunk of the tree behind it, hilt-deep.

 

He backed up until he was next to Cloud, watching the dragon he could see and listening for the ones he couldn’t. The odds were bad. He pulled a misshapen rock from the roots around them, lips pulled back to bare his teeth. If they wanted to get to Cloud, they’d have to get through him first. And he wasn’t letting that happen.

 

One other dragon stalked out into the open, looking like it would like nothing better than to gut Zack like a fish. Sleek and a dark, wooden brown, it almost reminded him of Cloud, except Cloud didn’t ever look like he would happily disembowel him and feast on his entrails. He moved a leg to stand fully over Cloud’s body, watching them pace back and forth like agitated cats. Something about it struck him as odd, but a moment later another dragon attempted to bite at Cloud, only catching his cloak in its mouth before Zack hurled his stone at it, driving it off.

 

“ _Don’t TOUCH HIM.”_ Zack snarled, pressing himself and Cloud further back into the tree so that most of his unconscious friend was shielded from view.

 

He was so preoccupied with searching the greenery around them for hidden attacks that he didn’t notice the first dragon step forwards with impatience, and inhale in a gesture all SOLDIERS knew. He looked up to the sight of the bottom of the dragons chest swelling, a vibrant light visible between the scales, like lava flow beneath the cracked ground of a volcano.

 

He had half a second to realize that he wouldn’t be able to get himself and Cloud out of the way in time, and another to twist around and haul Cloud up, sandwiching his entire body between the tree and Zack to shield him from the brunt of the flames. Hopefully it would be enough. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the flames to tear into his back.

 

Instead, there was an earth-shaking thump as something massive hit the ground. Zack twisted around, and gaped for a moment at the sight of the mottled white scales of the back of a mountainous dragon, seemingly facing off against the others. _Just how many dragons were out here,_ he wondered frantically as he took the opportunity to begin dragging Cloud away, injuries and exhausting making his limbs weak.

 

Behind him, there was movement and a slow exhale brushing against Zack’s back. He turned and pushed Cloud behind him, traitorous body shaking with effort as he faced the huge dragon that he’d seen in the sky so often.

 

It raised one talon out, strangely delicate, and Zack flinched but didn’t move from in front of Cloud. Nothing to fight with, nowhere to run. He was through.

 

The sunlight reflected off the dragon strangely, seeming to warp and blinding him for a moment. When his vision cleared, it wasn’t a dragon, but a familiar, brown-haired woman that stood before him. Her hand gently cupped his face as he stared without comprehending.

 

“Aer… ith?” he asked, and she nodded, eyes searching his face.

 

There were several parts of his mind yelling at him, trying to connect all the information his exhausted brain had just been given, but there was one he needed to convey, the same one that had driven him all this way.

 

“Aerith,” he said again, blinking away dark spots, “Cloud’s sick. He’s got… raw mako in him. Please, help him.”

 

She nodded, her expression determined, and Zack felt the stress that had been holding him up this entire time dissipate. Aerith would help him. She could heal him.

 

With that thought, he dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, unconscious before he hit the ground.

 

\---

 

When he woke up, it was with the same silence that he had trained himself into on the run. He didn’t let his body twitch, didn’t give any indication that he was awake, because if a dragon was close, any kind of movement would catch its eye.

 

As he came into full awareness, he realized that he was _not_ sleeping on the familiar dirt ground or pressed up against a tree, but rather sat down on a hard, man made surface. His neck and shoulders ached.

 

More importantly, he couldn’t feel Cloud anywhere. His body tried to jerk upright at the thought, alarm shooting through him. Where was Cloud? Where—

 

His arms weren’t responding, bent at an awkward angle behind him. Looking around him revealed he was in a small, nondescript room, tied to a chair, and alone with no Cloud in sight.

 

“You’re awake,” a cold voice cut through Zack’s panicked thoughts. He twisted to look behind him, and spotted a woman with long dark hair, scowling at him.

 

“Cloud!” he said, barely coherent. “Is Cloud okay? Where is he?”

 

Her scowl deepened. “How did you meet Cloud?” she asked, ignoring his questions.

 

Zack forced himself to calm down. If he was here with people, that meant Cloud was around somewhere too. Aerith was here, if his groggy memories could be believed, and that meant these people were probably her allies. Maybe.

 

“He found me when I was lost and injured. Saved my life, though I didn’t remember it for a bit.” Zack shifted anxiously. “Next time I saw him, he had a whole canister of raw mako in his bloodstream. Is he okay? Did Aerith--”

 

“I wonder if you would be so worried if you knew what he truly was, _dragon hunter.”_

 

Zack stilled. He’d thought Aerith had brought him here, so it must’ve been safe, but if she’d only been able to grab Cloud… It was possible that they _weren’t_ allies. She was putting such an emphasis on the fact that Cloud was a dragon… Was she a rogue hunter, trying to turn Zack against Cloud?

 

 _Had_ Cloud and Aerith gotten out safely?

 

His already-frayed self restraint snapped, and he let the stress he was feeling fuel the adrenaline it took to break through the restraints. He shook off the remnants of the bindings and stood, eyeing the stranger that stood between him and the door.

 

“I _knew it!_ I _knew_ you didn’t really care.” she said, tone vicious, and then stepped back, lifting her arms into a strong guard position. Zack stepped forwards, and was immediately distracted by the fact that her face was changing, the clear skin wiped away like condensation off a window. In its place, there was a familiar pattern of dark scales.

 

Oh.

 

“Wait.” Zack backed up and sat back down onto the chair. “I completely misjudged this situation. I don’t want to fight you, not even a little bit.”

 

The woman stared at him. He tucked his hands under his thighs for good measure.

 

“What, you’re fine to go attack someone who can’t defend himself but you can’t fight me at my strongest?” She bit out, glaring at him with reptilian eyes.

 

Zack graciously ignored the implication that he would ever try to hurt Cloud after he’d spent literally months hauling his comatose ass around on the off chance he could be saved. “No, no. I thought you were a dragon hunter, and that Cloud might be in danger. I already know Cloud is a… whatever you guys call yourselves. Dragon-shapeshifter? I knew him as a dragon before I knew him as a human, even.”

 

Her stance faltered. “You knew the entire time? And you don’t… You don’t care?”

 

Zack shrugged. “I mean, I fight dragons that try to kill me and other folks. Cloud did the opposite of that, so even before I knew he was a person also, we were cool.”

 

There was a long stretch of silence where the stranger looked at him like she couldn’t believe he was a real person. He cleared his throat, undeterred by the awkwardness. “Really though, _is_ Cloud okay? Do you know?”

 

She sighed, rummaging in her pockets. “He’s with Aerith. She been with him for the past two days. Hold your hands out and I’ll take you to them.”

 

Zack did so without question, and blinked at her when she slapped a pair of thick handcuffs onto his wrists. “...You know I can break these, right?”

 

“Nobody wants to see a dragon hunter let loose in a village protected by and full of dragons. Don’t break them.” She grabbed the chain of the cuffs and pulled him towards the door.

 

“Let’s go.”

 

He immediately felt many eyes lock onto him as he was led through the village, but he was too busy taking everything in to pay them much attention.

 

It was obvious that this wasn’t just a temporary camp. If Zack hadn’t known any better, he would’ve thought they were in any of the small towns along the mountain ranges, before the dragon population had wiped out a good number of them. The houses were built well, and there were chickens and cats wandering the streets. No high tech stuff, but still operating perfectly fine. It reminded him of how Kunsel had described Cosmo Canyon.

 

The woman-- who introduced herself brusquely as Tifa-- guided him to a small house that was only distinguishable from the others by the flowers that covered the ground wherever there was room. Zack touched a hand to his ear, remembering a gift tucked behind his ear. This was Aerith’s home, then?

 

He followed her through the door, and down a hall to a small room where Aerith sat hunched over a prone figure. Zack lunged forwards, landing on his knees next to the bed. Tifa made an alarmed noise and grabbed the back of his collar with force, but he only needed to watch the light rise and fall of Cloud’s chest to let his shoulders relax. Cloud was fine. Aerith had him, he was breathing, he would be okay.

 

“Don’t do that!” Tifa hissed lowly at him, like she didn’t want to infringe on the silence of the room.

 

“Hello, Zack,” Aerith greeted without looking up from where her hands were pressed against Cloud’s temple. The feeling of magic was thick in the air. He resisted the urge to go through his normal vitals check, curling his twitching fingers into fists.

 

“Hey. How is he?”

 

“Still unresponsive. I’ve healed the cysts from mako crystallization, so he’s not in any immediate danger, but the real issue with mako is always the mind. It’s lucky that he even managed to regain human form before the corruption set in.” Aerith drew back, the glow around her hands fading.

 

“Corruption?” He asked, giving in to the urge to grab Cloud’s hand and press a thumb against his wrist. Aerith leaned back with a long exhale, and Tifa moved to grip her shoulder. She smiled wearily at her before turning back to Zack.

 

“You remember how I mentioned the Calamity last time I saw you?” At Zack’s nod, she continued. “It’s also known as Jenova, and it works like a virus. The dragons you’re familiar with are weapons of the Planet, designed to protect it from Jenova’s influence and the mako extraction process. They’re modelled off the strongest forms of the Ancients of old. Unfortunately, without an Ancient’s will behind it, a being made out of the Lifestream would be extremely easy for Jenova to corrupt.”

 

Zack nodded dutifully, though going by Tifa’s look, they both knew he caught about 30% of that, at best. “So, Cloud’s… made from the Planet? And he’s sick because of Jenova?”

 

“No, Cloud was born human, same as you. Everyone here but me was. Human minds are strong enough to withstand Jenova’s influence… most of the time.”

 

“I’m guessing having raw untreated mako shot directly into his veins qualifies as weakening the mind, huh?” Zack settled back onto his haunches, lips tightening at the slowness of Cloud’s heartbeat. All of SOLDIER knew how mako fucked with your mind. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”  

 

Aerith hesitated, sharing a glance with Tifa, and Zack stared at them imploringly. He didn’t want to lose another friend, not if he could do something about it.

 

“There’s… one thing we could try, but it’s dangerous, and we can’t do it without exposing ourselves to Jenova. You, however…”

 

Zack cottoned on immediately. “I don’t turn into a big scary dragon that can cause mass casualties if I fail, right? I’m SOLDIER though, it’d still be dangerous--”

 

“No, no,” Aerith interrupted. “You’ve already got Jenova in you, Zack. All of SOLDIER does, as far as I know.”

 

Zack blinked. Well, that was new information to him. Anyways. “Then, it doesn't matter if I risk it! What would I have to do?”

 

“According to my first mother… There was a way of bringing back those who had lost themselves, linking the minds and creating a bond that would ground them both to their consciousnesses. Zack, this is a process that leaves you at the mercy of both your own mind and Cloud’s, and I can’t do anything to help you there. If you don’t wish to--”

 

“Of course I wish to! There’s no way I’m gonna leave Cloud stuck in his own head if I can help him out. Just show me what to do.” Zack set his jaw, not letting the wordless conversation between Aerith and Tifa deter him.

 

“Alright,” Aerith finally conceded, standing up and brushing off her skirt. “We will make preparations. Stay with him, and rest.”

 

She strode out the door, and Tifa followed at a slower pace. She paused just as she reached the doorway, making eye contact with Zack.

 

“If you harm him in any way, shape, or form. I will personally strip your flesh from your bones and bury you alive.”

 

Zack nodded, ignoring the sweat beading on his forehead. “Understandable.”

 

She made a face at him, and then left.

 

Zack pressed his forehead to Cloud’s hand, reassuring himself that he was still there, and promptly fell asleep.

 

\---

 

“Die, dragon hunter!”

 

Zack jolted into awareness, and only the fact that he’d slammed his head into the side of the bedframe kept him from going for the knife he no longer had on him.

 

Cloud continued to lay securely on the bed. In front of him, a preteen with a very large wooden shuriken stood, pointing at him.  

 

“Hello?” Zack tried.

 

“Don’t try and talk to me! I know who you are!” The kid shouted, with intense bravado.

 

“I’m Zack?”

 

“You’re the Shinra scum that _stole_ Cloud and made him sick! I’m going to steal all your valuables.” She informed him, very matter of factly.

 

Zack considered this. “I was trying to help him, though.”

 

“AND,” she bulldozed through, ignoring him completely, “you threw a ROCK at me. It almost _hit_ me!”

 

Zack was confused for a moment, since he was very sure he’d never seen this twelve-year-old before now in his life. After a few seconds of thought, he realized. She must have been one of the dragons trying to grab Cloud when they first reached this place. Yeah, Zack had kind of completely lost his shit.

 

“I’m sorry,” he told her, very seriously. “I was just scared. If you’d like, you can throw a rock at me back.”

 

She paused for a moment, scrutinizing him with narrowed eyes. “Don’t move!” she commanded, abruptly, and raced away. Zack waited patiently as the doors in the house slammed a couple of times, and then she stomped back in with a rock in one hand and dragging an even younger kid along with the other.

 

“Oh, I know you.” Zack said, recognizing the little girl from the berry field.

 

She shied away, grabbing onto the older kid’s shirt. “Yuffie, I don’t think--

 

“Don’t be afraid! Your big sis is here to protect you, and now’s not the time to think! Now is the time for _vengeance!”_

 

With that, she spun around and threw the rock, nailing Zack right between the eyes. The kid gasped.

 

Zack blinked at the sting of the pebble hitting his face.

 

Two pairs of young eyes blinked back at him, expectantly.

 

“Urgh-- Waaaugghhh,” he groaned suddenly, falling back onto the floor in a dramatic slump. “You have bested me… I surrender…” He let his head fall back to the floor with a thud, and stuck his tongue out for good measure.

 

There was a muffled giggle, and then Yuffie put one foot on Zack’s side and struck a victory pose, holding her shuriken up in the air. Zack closed his eyes, feigning death. “Ha! Another foe defeated by how awesome we are! C’mon Marlene, you have to do the pose, too!”

 

A very small foot stepped lightly on his ankle. “Y… yeah!”

 

“We are the conquering heroes, bane of dragon hunters everywhere, the strongest--!”

 

Yuffie’s boasting was interrupted by the room door slamming open, and a deep voice yelling Marlene’s name before abruptly cutting off.

 

“Papa!” The pressure on Zack’s ankle vanished.

 

Zack opened one eye to peek as Marlene jumped at her dad, who was a tall and burly man with dark skin and a wicked cool prosthetic. He was staring at Zack with a strange expression, and Zack gave him a wink before going back to playing dead.

 

“Look, look, we beat the SOLDIER! Yuffie threw a rock at him,” Marlene informed the newcomer with excitement.

 

“Did you now…” The man’s voice was sort of strangled. “Yuffie, you got anything to say about this?”

 

“Nope!” Yuffie seemed to vanish from his side, and then there was the sound of a window being opened. “I just remembered I left some materia in Red’s pockets, gotta go bye!”

 

The man scoffed, pausing in his turn to walk out the door. “Thanks,” he said in a gruff tone, before hurrying out with Marlene sitting on his shoulder.

 

Zack sat up after his footsteps faded, pushing himself up to sit on the chair next to Cloud.

 

“Your friends are funny,” he told him. “You should quit making them worry and wake up already.”  

 

\---

 

He woke up the next morning to Aerith’s gentle hand on his shoulder, and found that some kind soul had shoved a pillow under his head and even draped a blanket around him. It was a bit of a novelty after months of sleeping out in the woods.

 

“Everything’s ready,” Aerith told him with a smile. She turned and lifted Cloud into her arms with ease, which was impressive considering their difference in body mass. Perks of being… whatever Aerith was. He had forgotten to ask. Well, it was probably fine.

 

He followed her outside, and though there were several people watching him keenly, Aerith’s cheerful and untroubled presence seemed to reassure most of them that all was well. Zack wondered if they knew what was going on.

 

They walked down past most of the buildings, which were all impressively well-made for a secret village hidden from the government, and approached a sharp cliff of rock, the side of one of the encircling mountains. Aerith led him easily to an easily-missed crevice along the side, and they descended into a tunnel that expanded into a cave soon after.

 

The air was thick with magic, and it was easy to see why. In the center of the cave, a mako spring had welled up, creating a deep, still pool of green. Just being near it made Zack feel on edge. Tifa was waiting by the poolside with a set of keys, and she unlocked his cuffs without a word, worried eyes locked on Cloud.

 

“So, the plan is to put us in the same stuff that got Cloud into this mess in the first place?” Zack asked, watching as Aerith knelt by the side of the pool.

 

“Unless you’re secretly an Ancient, there’s no way to enter the subconscious mind without exposing yourself to mako. I’ll be overseeing, to make sure nothing bad happens. The rest is up to you,” Aerith paused, her smile fading. “Zack… This will be dangerous. There’s no telling how Jenova might manifest. If you don’t want--”

 

Zack stuck his foot in the mako pool. “Wow, look at that, I’m raring to go. Let’s do this thing.”

 

Aerith smiled at him, a little bit sad, and then lowered Cloud into the pool. Seeing him sink into it made something in his gut wrench with anxiety, and he busied himself with sitting on the ledge of the spring. The mako felt familiar, burning at his skin in a way that made him begin to shake. He lowered himself into the pool anyhow.

 

“Grab onto him,” Aerith instructed, and Zack waded over to where Cloud floated, reaching out to clasp a hand around his wrist. “Don’t let go.”

 

With that final warning, she cast Sleep, and Zack sunk into both Mako and unconsciousness.

 

\---

 

“Zack. Zaaack. C’mon, up and at ‘em.”

 

Zack blinked, trying to make sense of the nothingness around him. “Whazzit?”

 

“I can’t believe you,” Cloud said, suddenly there at Zack’s side. “You really just went and decided to link your brain with a guy you... barely even know, huh?”

 

“Cloud! Oh, man it worked! Hey, you’re talking and everything, it can’t be that bad, huh?” Zack reached out to catch him in a shoulder hug, but his arm passed through Cloud like smoke. Cloud raised an eyebrow at him.

 

“Alright, spoke too soon. What do we gotta do, then?”

 

“If we’re not both fully ready to accept the link, it won’t work. We have to figure out why we’re not ready.”

 

No sooner than Cloud had spoken, their surroundings shifted like a blurred photograph, settling into clarity in a snowy mountainside.

 

“I don’t recognize this,” Zack said after a moment. “Your hometown?”

 

“Not yet,” Cloud said, searching for something in the snow.

 

A moment later, a trooper appeared, casting a glance back before continuing over the slope. “What is that guy thinking…,” the trooper muttered to himself. 

 

He hurried to a more level patch of ground, and then set up his rifle, aiming right at Zack and Cloud. Zack shifted out of the way, gesturing to Cloud that he should do the same. Cloud pointed behind him, and he turned. As though it only came into being when Zack’s attention was on it, the sound of battle reached him.

 

It was… him. He did remember this, now that he thought about it. This was near Icicle Town. It had been in those months after Angeal’s death, when he took reckless missions and charged ahead like a fool. Angeal had always caught him by the collar before, reminded him to think before he acted. The thought was like a barb in his lungs.

 

He watched himself fight against a Bandersnatch with a grimace. His form was sloppy, full of bitterness, and he wasn’t paying enough attention to his surroundings. Even as his double moved to cut down his opponent, another Bandersnatch jumped at his unguarded side. Zack winced. He had to learn the hard way that nobody was there to watch his back now.

 

A gunshot ricocheted through the air, and the second Bandersnatch was flung away, shot through the shoulder. Past Zack whirled around, and Zack followed suit.

 

The trooper lowered his gun, lips pinched in displeasure. “You trying to get yourself killed, backwater boy?”

 

“Hah, my bad. Good thing I got you though, huh?” Zack stepped back as the two regrouped, the trooper elbowing his past self in the side before moving to forge on ahead. He shook his head, confused.

 

“Who is that? What…?”

 

Cloud tilted his head in a beckoning gesture, and they followed after. Before long, the scenery shifted again, more subtly this time. Zack knew it instantly. Modeoheim.

 

His heart strained painfully as they passed through the shattered warehouse where Angeal had made his last request. This had to be earlier in time, because Angeal’s body lay still on the ground. Zack turned away. Along the back wall, Past Zack was sat with his palms pressed against his eyes, shaking with silent grief.

 

Zack watched as a trooper approached, sliding down the wall to sit next to Zack. He pulled his helmet off, and set a hand on Zack’s shoulder, silent but _there._ Zack stared, astonished. Though his face was significantly younger and less worn, it was unmistakably Cloud. He turned to the Cloud he knew.

 

“You... were in Shinra? Why don’t I remember this? Is it real?”

 

“It’s your subconscious. You can’t alter it the way memories can be altered.” Cloud answered, still looking at the scene with intent eyes. Zack watched as his younger self was comforted by a friend he couldn’t remember meeting.

 

“My subconscious?” He’d assumed that he’d be helping Cloud remember himself in his mind, but with this… Maybe he was the one who needed to remember.  “What else am I forgetting?”

 

Cloud turned to look at him, something in his gaze foreboding. “I don’t know. I should, I know... I know _you_ , but… everything is hazy. Are you sure you wanna know?”

 

Zack didn’t bother asking for elaboration. “Yeah.”

 

They started walking again, and came across a familiar town entrance.

 

“Nibelheim,” Zack said, a new awareness blooming in the back of his mind. He turned to Cloud, who was staring at the scenery as though trying to commit every inch of it to memory. “Your hometown… right?”

 

“Yeah,” Cloud answered distractedly. He led them through the courtyard, brow furrowing deeper as he went. “Something bad happened. I…” He held a hand to his head, wincing.

 

Zack reached out an ineffective hand, concerned. “Hey, don’t strain yourself. We’re here to figure these things out, right? It’ll show us. We just have to… get through it.”

 

Cloud nodded, shaky. “It feels wrong that I don’t know. I should remember.”

 

After seeing what he had, Zack could relate. “That’s what mako does to you. That’s what we’re here to fix.” He tried to believe in his own words.

 

As they spoke, their younger selves came rushing down the mountain pass into town, accompanied by a girl in a cowboy outfit. Tifa. He’d forgotten her too.

 

He followed them into the inn rooms they’d been given, watching his younger self pace like a caged lion. He remembered the feeling. On one of his passes, Cloud reached out and touched his arm lightly, face wrinkled with concern. Other Zack paused, and then sighed deeply, letting the tension drain out of him before sitting on the bed next to Cloud. It was… strange to watch. Zack couldn’t remember any method of calming himself other than working his body into exhaustion when he got like that.

 

Then again, it looked like this time, he hadn’t _had_ to calm himself down.

 

“I just don’t know what Sephiroth’s thinking,” his younger self was confiding, running agitated hands through his hair. Cloud caught his wrists, pulling them down and holding them gently, as though Zack was the delicate one.

 

“If stuff in there is as troubling and classified as you say, I’m not surprised he’s acting weird. Didn’t you say he was thinking about abandoning Shinra?”

 

Zack jerked. His past self trusted Cloud with that information? Behind him, his Cloud spoke.

 

“We… were close. I remember that. I’ve always remembered that. It’s why I couldn’t let you die, no matter what.”

 

Zack watched as Cloud’s past self rubbed reassuring circles along Zack’s wrists with his thumbs. “How close?” he wondered, feeling a keen sense of loss for what he didn’t remember. How different was his mind, with someone he trusted there at his side. What had happened to Cloud?

 

“I’m going to write to a friend,” Small Cloud was saying. “She’s got a good sense about these sort of things, maybe she can help him.”

 

“Aerith,” Cloud told him succinctly, watching his young self begin to pen a letter. Zack’s younger self was doing breathing exercises he never remembered learning.

 

“You knew her then?” Zack asked, surprised. For a moment, their surroundings flickered, and they were at the base of a cliff, with two small forms crumpled in the snow below. An enormous shadow passed overhead.

 

“She saved our lives,” Cloud said absently, “though we didn’t know it was her until much later.”

 

They snapped back to the inn, and Zack watched as the two teens lounged on the bed and talked, occasionally laughing. It was a refreshing change from the lost friendships of Angeal and Sephiroth. They’d been friends, but they were always coworkers first and foremost. He’d always been the younger, less mature party. It was nice to see himself and Cloud having a different type of friendship. Maybe a stronger type.

 

Cloud’s past self stood up abruptly, and approached his doppelganger. He said something, too soft for Zack to hear, and Cloud nodded. In the next moment, they were gone. Zack turned to face his own younger self, and found it staring directly at him.

 

He blinked, and everything shifted again. He remembered this.

 

Before his eyes, Nibelheim burned, with the absolute, unquenchable destruction that only came from dragon’s flame. It felt like a more personal horror, now that he knew Cloud had witnessed the destruction of his own hometown.

 

He moved towards the flames, searching for survivors. This was what he had done last time, while Sephiroth had been fighting a dragon to the death. His younger self was nowhere to be seen, which was odd, but everything felt real in a way it hadn’t before. He found he could touch the walls of the collapsing buildings, could feel the heat as he impulsively began to try and drag someone out of the flames.

 

 _No,_ his mind whispered to him, _this isn’t how it went._

 

Before his eyes, Nibelheim burned, with the hint of magic that came from elemental spells. It was horrifying, and smoke smothered all of his senses. This was Cloud’s hometown, full of people he’d been talking to only hours ago, who were now choking on ashes or worse.

 

Where was Cloud?

 

He turned to search for his friend, heart in his throat. Motion at the corner of his vision drew his gaze like a magnet, and he watched as Cloud sprinted by, hand in hand with a brown-haired girl in pink. He didn't know her. As he watched, they headed up the mountain pass, towards the reactor where Sephiroth was fighting.

 

Concern warred with pragmatism in his chest. Cloud and his friend shouldn’t be up there, not with a dragon strong enough to challenge Sephiroth up there. He should follow, but there were still people struggling to escape the burning houses. He turned towards the flames, taking a step. He had to…

 

**They need you. They’ll die. They need you.**

 

He stumbled. He had to follow Cloud. He couldn’t lose another friend. He began to run, following after the hurried footprints of the two. He was faster, but Cloud knew the terrain better, and Zack continued to run into monsters. He dispatched them with the Buster easily every time, and when he got to the reactor, he was greeted with an impossible sight.

 

Two of the largest dragons he’d ever seen were fighting viciously, tearing at each other with earth-shaking growls. Sephiroth was nowhere to be seen, but the pang of worry he felt was muted by the urge to continue following. He had to get closer. They’d die.

 

Something tore against his back painfully, shredding a hole through the back of his shirt, but he had no time and so he ignored it, racing up the steps to enter the reactor. He passed the body of the Mayor without a second glance, urgency pushing him forwards.

 

The room with the mako pods had been destroyed. There was a gaping hole in the side of the wall, and Cloud and Tifa were standing on the staircase to see through it. Tifa was clutching her side, blood staining most of her shirt. Cloud looked unharmed, and turned to face him.

 

“Zack!” He said, and then froze, eyes flitting up for a moment before searching his face. “Zack…?”

 

Cloud. Zack held up his Buster Sword in an offensive stance without thought. That was good instinct, he’d need to be ready if he was going to protect them. He took a step up the stairs.

 

“Tifa,” Cloud said, face drawn tight. “Get to the chamber behind us. Destroy the thing in there.”  

 

That sounded dangerous. He took another step forwards, and watched as Tifa turned and fled into the chamber, his brows furrowing. They shouldn’t be running away.

 

“Zack,” Cloud started, standing between him and the chamber entrance with his hands raised, “what are you doing?”

 

Wasn’t it obvious? He was keeping them safe. They’d die if he wasn’t here.

 

**Go after her. She’ll die.**

 

He pressed forwards, only pausing at the hands pressed against his chest. Cloud looked at him with fear in his eyes, saying something, trying to stop him from going further. Zack was afraid too. That’s why he had to go after her.

 

Injured was better than dead. It would be okay so long as he made sure nothing could get to them.

 

Zack lowered his sword, and saw relief flash across Cloud’s face briefly, before he picked him up by the shirt and threw him onto the pods below with enough force to dent the metal. Cloud made a hoarse noise of pain, but he wasn’t moving anywhere, which meant he was safe. Zack continued on, searching for Tifa.

 

She was crouched at the base of the glass tank, which had been shattered. Most of whatever had been in there had been reduced to a pulp already by her fists, but she looked up at him with anger in her gaze and a fire materia in her hand.

 

He found himself in front of the tank without thought, the fire spell burning through his clothes and skin. That seemed to be a theme, today. He reached out and broke Tifa’s wrist, the fire materia falling to the floor. She should know better than to try and d **estroy what was beyond her comprehension.**

 

Zack dropped her, turning to the shattered remains of the glass chamber. He realized abruptly that the warnings of death in his mind weren’t warnings at all. They were promises. They had **allied with those who opposed Mother, and so they’d die.**

 

Zack crushed the fire materia into shattered pieces.

 

When he reappeared in the stairwell, Tifa was trying to reach the torn hole in the wall, shouting for help. He walked down the stairs silently, and turned to face the pod Cloud’s body laid on, hefting the Buster Sword up. Cloud looked at him, struggling to hold onto consciousness. **He could fix that.**

 

“Zack,” Cloud wheezed, body shaking with effort. “Zack, something’s wrong. Wake up, Zack.”

 

From above, Tifa screamed Cloud’s name.

 

Zack paused, eyes narrowing in concentration. Something _was_ wrong. What was he doing?

 

**Protecting them.**

 

This wasn’t protecting them. This was hurting them. He’d been hurting them. He was… Where was Sephiroth? He dug his heels in against the impulse to just act, stubbornly resisting. What was going on?

 

In a heartbeat, the presence that had been lowly muttering in his ear the entire time became deafening, smothering Zack in a mental chokehold.

 

“Cloud,” he choked out, and then stabbed down.

 

The sword slid through the metal pod like butter, and Cloud let out a pained breath as he stared at the slab of metal embedded inches from his head. Zack nearly wept with relief, muscles spasming as he strained to keep still, all his focus on holding onto himself through the clamor in his head. “Run--”

 

Before Zack could finish, Tifa jumped down and landed fist-first on top of him, knocking him to the ground with her momentum, and slamming her good fist into his face over and over. Zack watched it happen, finally separated from his past self and reeling from the truth. Beneath Tifa, his younger self had succumbed to unconsciousness, and he stared at the one dragon wing protruding from his back, unfurled on the ground next to his body. Huh. That explained the back pain.

 

Outside, there was a deafening roar, and the dragon he now recognized as Aerith pulled away from the one-winged dragon, which was howling in pain. Aerith looked to the reactor and made a concerned warble at the sight of Tifa and Cloud, who were in undeniably bad shape. The other dragon took to the skies in her moment of distraction, and pulled the top of the reactor clean off. Zack watched it fly away, impossible and unknown before now, and knew what had happened to Sephiroth.

 

Next to him, Cloud went limp, eyes rolling back, and his Cloud pulled himself out of the memory.

 

“Ow,” he said, with a remarkable deadpan for someone who had just re-experienced being full of trauma and many broken bones. Zack didn’t laugh, too busy drinking in the sight of him unharmed without words, and his expression softened.

 

“It wasn’t your fault, you know.”

 

Zack stepped back as Aerith flew through the hole, draconic body disintegrating as she went. When she touched down, she was a younger version of the human Aerith he knew. She rushed to Cloud and Tifa and immediately began to try to heal them, tension knitting her brow. “Tifa, don’t! We can’t move him, his spine--”

 

He turned away, staring at the shredded remains of Jenova’s chamber. “I almost killed you. If Aerith hadn’t been there, you could’ve died.”

 

Cloud followed him, stepping away from the group. “You know I’m right. It wasn’t your will, you just felt it for yourself.”

 

“But it was still my hands that did it. If I had been stronger, or just _talked_ to Sephiroth--”

 

Cloud’s expression darkened. “Sephiroth,” he spit, like a curse, “was set on his path. Talking wasn’t going to stop him, Zack.”

 

“He was doing the exact same thing as me, though. Don’t you get it, if I was as strong as him I would’ve been just as bad--!”

 

“It’s _because_ you were stronger than him that you didn’t kill us, Zack,” Cloud set a hand on Zack’s shoulder, and for the first time since they’d woken, it made proper contact. “I know my own mind, I wouldn’t have lasted against that sort of control for five seconds. It’s why I turned back, even though the mako would leave my human body like this. I trusted your strength to get us home. I’m trusting your strength _now_ , Zack.”  

 

He pulled Cloud’s cold hand up to his cheek, leaning against it with a sigh. “You’re really not gonna let me feel all guilty about this, huh?”

 

“Nah,” Cloud said, lips tilting up the slightest amount. “Besides, by now you’ve saved my life enough times to negate one measly murder attempt.”

 

“Pretty sure you started the life-saving streak there, Cloud ‘I’m going to nurse this guy back to health as a dragon just to scare the shit out of him’ Strife.” Zack paused. “Hey, look.”

 

The three non-SOLDIER members had vanished, leaving Zack the only one remaining when reinforcements barged in. Cloud gritted his teeth. “You wouldn’t believe how mad I was when I woke up and found out they’d left you there. Aerith only saw that you were infected by Jenova, and Tifa… well, I’m sure you could tell she’s got a grudge.”

 

“Aw, got all worked up over little old me? You shouldn’t have,” Zack teased him, trying to ignore the pit of unease as the troopers checked the area for other survivors. A thought he probably should have had before now struck him. “Wait, if I had a wing coming out of me when they found me, where the hell did it go?” He checked over his shoulder, just in case it had spontaneously appeared now that he remembered it.

 

Cloud’s gaze was fixed on the door. “Aerith had an idea. I hope it’s not the case.”

 

After a few moments, it became clear exactly what Cloud was fearing. None other than Professor Hojo himself came in, looking entirely too invested in the situation. Zack didn’t know him personally, or at least he hadn’t thought he did. The small tidbits of information Sephiroth shared about him didn’t exactly endear Zack to him, either way.

 

After a few moments of investigating Zack’s unconscious body as though it was a bug under a microscope, Hojo stood, brushing his coat off.

 

“These are the last of the Jenova cells in our possession,” He turned to a jumpy-looking lab tech. “Get him to the mansion laboratory and we’ll remove the extra appendage, suspend him in mako for a few days, and then observe his fieldwork afterwards. Make a note for a mental status exam, as well. If he fails it, we can obtain a new research subject for the Jenova project without any Turks nosing around.”

 

Zack dragged a hand over his face as the lab tech nodded and scurried away. Behind him, Cloud glared daggers at the troopers lifting Zack’s body onto a stretcher.

 

“Guess that explains why being immersed a mako pool felt uncomfortably familiar… You won’t blame me if I’d rather not relive those memories, right? I think I’ve got the gist.” Zack stuck an arm under the back of his shirt, seeking out the rough, ridged scar dragging below one shoulder blade. “Can’t believe I thought this was a dragon-inflicted injury.”

 

Cloud grabbed his hand, a little exasperated, and they returned to that same emptiness. “I… think I’ve got most of my pieces, now. How about you?”

 

Zack patted himself down in jest. “All my life-altering revelations about repressed trauma have been safely tucked away. What now?”  

 

“Uh,” Cloud said. “I guess we just… wake up?” He grimaced. “That’s been pretty difficult for me for the past… while, now that I think about it.”

 

Zack squeezed his hand. “I’ll tug you up with me. Our minds are like, tied together now, right?”

 

“Something like that,” Cloud agreed. “Well then, lead the way.”

 

\---

 

They sat up in sync, coughing to expel the mako from their lungs while Aerith and Tifa hovered. For a moment, Zack relished in the feeling of being able to breathe fresh air, and then he stood, still holding onto Cloud’s wrist. He trudged over to the edge of the pool, Cloud following a bit unsteadily.

“Alright, I’m over this, let’s never get in mako again.”

 

“Agreed,” Cloud said, and then was tackled by Tifa as soon as he’d gotten out of the spring proper. Zack let their hands go so Tifa could bully him for being so reckless, and the faint buzz of magic he hadn’t noticed until now faded. “Huh. Looks like it worked.”

 

Aerith hugged him without warning, smiling in the same unworried way she’d smiled back in the cabin at their first… second meeting? Zack held his arms aloft, very conscious of the green mind-altering substance all over him. “Yeesh, couldn’t you guys save the hugs for after we got cleaned up?”

 

“Absolutely not,” Aerith chimed, delighted. Tifa pulled a thoroughly-scolded and entirely unrepentant Cloud over, giving Zack a hard look. Shit.

 

“Uh, sorry about your wrist. And all of Cloud’s bones. My bad.”

 

Cloud opened his mouth to probably say something in his defense, but Tifa beat him to the punch by literally punching the shit out of Zack’s shoulder. “Agh,” he said, before she stepped forwards and hugged him tight enough to squeeze the air out of his lungs.

 

“Thanks.”

 

Zack watched over her shoulder as Aerith flung her arms around Cloud, meeting his clear, aware blue eyes, and smiled big enough that his cheeks began to hurt.

 

“Thank _you._ For beating the shit out of me. Cloud’s-life-saving debts repaid in full.”  

 

She scoffed, and released him. “I’d do it for free.”

 

Zack laughed, and then beelined for Cloud as soon as he was free from hugging arms. “Feeling okay?”

 

“Yup,” Cloud said, bending forwards a bit as Zack slung an arm around his shoulders. “I’m still forgetting stuff, but I’m not gonna be sleepin’ for days anytime soon.” He yawned. “...Maybe one day of sleeping.”

 

“I could certainly use a nap!” Zack laughed, before pulling Cloud close and bumping their heads together in a familiar gesture.

 

“Glad to have you back,” he told him, meaning it in every way that mattered. Cloud smiled, a little shaky but whole once more.

 

“Glad to be back.”


End file.
